Friday, June 10, 2011

What is church?

The column infers that Oprah
through her show created a “church,” a community of people whose spiritual
needs are met through her program and associated products, especially the books
that she features.

As Islam expands in the United
States, and to a lesser degree in other western countries, imams face new
expectations. People look to the imam for pastoral guidance, for community
leadership, and for organizing social, welfare, and educational programs at the
mosque. In other words, the mosque instead of being simply a place of prayer
becomes the focal point of a community who look to the mosque and its leader to
meet their spiritual needs. Western culture transforms a distinctive Muslim
institution into a hybrid of Islam and Christianity.

In American Grace by
Robert Putnam and David Campbell (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), the
authors describe a Jewish synagogue, Beth Emet, which is located in a Chicago
suburb. Setting that description in the context of American religion, Putnam
and Campbell remark about the “Protestantization” of Judaism, the process by
which Judaism has responded in a similar fashion to the same type of
expectations that Islam has more lately encountered.

More and more people find themselves
disenchanted with organized religion but continue to describe themselves as
spiritual. In surveys, these people criticize organized religion as
hypocritical and unhelpful. Too many congregations focus on the “what” without
thinking about the “why.” Consequently, programs exist for the sake of the
program and not as a means to the important end of nurturing and celebrating
spirituality. Although I strongly disagree with Rick Warren about the purpose
of the church, I think he has hit the nail on the head, as his bestseller
indicates, by focusing on the purpose driven church (this came out before his
better known book, The Purpose Driven Life).

Organized religion needs to
rediscover that its real purpose is nurturing and celebrating spirituality. Anything
that does not support that mission diverts and distracts.

Christians chart their
spiritual path according to the teachings of Jesus. To truly be a Christian
church a congregation must be a community of people who seek to walk the Jesus
path together. This requires that people know what constitutes spirituality and
how to nurture that spirituality in a manner consonant with what Jesus taught.

My guess is that many
congregations fall woefully short of that standard. Some small congregations
simply focus on keeping the doors open (and the vast majority of Christian
congregations are small). Larger, more vibrant congregations may succeed as a
community that nurtures and celebrates spirituality more by accident than
design, often unable to define with any real measure of clarity what “spirituality”
connotes.

The human spirit has six key
aspects: self-awareness, linguistic capacity, aesthetic sense, limited
autonomy, creativity, and the capacity to love and be loved. A healthy church
will intentionally create a community that emphasizes all six aspects.

For example, an Episcopal
congregation at worship will gather in a place where the aesthetics invite
attention to the beautiful and that which is greater than the self. The words
of the prayers, scripture readings, and sermon will engage the linguistic
capacity and invite the gathered to become more of themselves, of one another,
and of that which is greater than self, i.e., God. The music will similarly
engage the aesthetic sense, linguistic capacity, self-awareness, and – at its
best – be a catalyst for creative engagement with the community, the world, and
God. Holy Communion will invite people to exercise their limited autonomy to
make a choice (whether or not to receive, with the commitment that implies) while
continuing the reflection (prayer) begun earlier in worship. Finally, the
thrust of the worship in total will be to help people to experience the
community’s love for them as an expression of God’s unconditional love, love
that impels them at the end of worship to love self, others, and creation more
fully.

Of course, no one pattern of community
life will fit everybody. Do you participate in a community that nurtures and
celebrates your spirituality?